a life unkind
by Raindog Bride
Summary: Shianni and her wayward cousin, but mostly Shianni, as Bell Tabris is hopeless and doomed to be just like her mother. – Multichapter Origin Fic.- Update: Vaughan receives a surprise.
1. Chapter 1

**a life unkind**

**0.-0.-0**

**Summary: Shianni and her wayward cousin, but mostly Shianni, as Bell Tabris is hopeless and doomed to be just like her mother. – Multichapter Origin Fic.-**

**0.-0.-0**

Her cousin was stupid and blustery and absolutely terrified of Nelaros, and judging from the slightly seasick expression of frozen politeness on his handsome face, Nelaros couldn't be feeling any better about it himself.

_This is stupid, _Shianni thought savagely. _Cyrion isn't _thinking_, he's just trying to get Bell settled up with a big belly before her throat gets cut, like her mother._

_That's why, _she thought more coolly, looking at Bell's feet, _he gave her the boots._

Bell's face was a hiccupping mixture of fear and earnestness, and Shianni realized with cold, bleak comprehension that her cousin did not want to get married, and that she was _fundamentally _not cut out to be a very good wife (at least in the sense of actually staying _home_ once in a while), but she also knew that Bell had made up her mind that if she absolutely had to, then she was going to try her damndest anyway.

Shianni had seen Bell's damndest.

Bell had given her damndest on more than one, very memorable occasion, not the least of which being her swordplay, but Bell's damndest usually ended up with a great deal of property damage and hurt feelings. Not that she really ever _intended to_, it was just that Bell was…. Enthusiastic.

And not terribly bright.

"So. Um," said Soris, finally, awkwardly trying to sail into somewhat friendlier waters than the ones his own stiff-faced fiancée was currently occupying. "I heard you two had a celebration last night. How'd it go?"

Shianni fought the urge to rub her temples.

Forgetting herself, Bell _beamed. "_Oh, you should've been there- we got Alarith to dig us up some of that, oh Maker what was it… lichen ale, I think? Un," she paused, blinking hugely, "-_believable_."

"That good?" said Soris, bemused, and utterly failing to register the look of affronted disbelief on his fiancée's face.

Bell shook her head, with the slow and horrified stare of one who has seen the face of the Beyond. "No." she said. "No, I would not say that." Then, quickly. "But Maker's _tits, _the money I won off'a Daven for finishing off the barrel- ow Shianni _quit, _I was just telling the man what we _did-"_

Nelaros was blinking rapidly by this point, as if to will himself into forgetting the new, fascinating discovery that his bride-to-be thought that exotic foreign ales were merely new and exciting opportunities for _illegal gambling, _but Shianni was past caring. She hauled her cousin by the elbow until they were just out of earshot and leaned in very, very closely.

"_Stop it_," she hissed. "Stop talking about drinking and betting and blighted _swords _for once, and start paying attention to the fact that Nelaros is going to wet himself if you don't start acting. _Suitable."_

The last word came out with more force than she intended, and Bell flinched under it. Her eyes were wide and hurt and confused, and, Shianni realized, too blighted young for what was expected of her.

She caught the small details. The hastily pulled back hair, the wide open face and the long, arched nose that came straight from her mother. Muddy grey eyes and skinny, nailbitten hands that were never going to be good for anything except swinging that sword around like a lunatic.

She was too young, and too in love with the long-dead memory of a mother who drank and fought more than she'd ever had the right to.

Inwardly she _raged _against Cyrion for ever thinking that Bell was going to be good for anything other than the same blighted fate that snatched Adaia away from him, and for trying to get her _married _for Maker's sake.

An elf who couldn't bear to keep its head down was a dead elf. That was all. Herding Bell into matrimony with a good, solid, suitable boy was only going to hasten the process- because once Bell started feeling trapped, she started acting stupid.

And worst of all, Bell was going to _try. _She was going to try to make this blighted marriage work and be terribly confused when it didn't, and she'd keep on being confused until it all fell down around her ears and Nelaros either started drinking heavily to compensate, or slit his wrists in the bathtub.

Bell's face was going blotchy red, the sort of thing Shianni had only ever seen when her cousin was about to do something highly regrettable. She was just about to take her cousin by the shoulders and _shake her _when-

"Grab a wench each, lads!"

**0.-0.-0**

_**Author's Note**_: _Yeah. Um. My PC ended up being simultaneously the most retardedly adorable elf babe ever. I don't question it. I merely state fact._

_To be continued!_

_(Like, dislike?)_


	2. Chapter 2

**a life unkind**

**0.-0.-0**

**Summary: Shianni and her wayward cousin, but mostly Shianni, as Bell Tabris is hopeless and doomed to be just like her mother. – Multichapter Origin Fic.-**

**0.-0.-0**

Bell had been raised with a series of unfortunate truths.

The first truth was that yes, it could be argued that her mother had died a hero. Standing up to the guard to protect the innocent and all that- all very well and good, but that didn't disguise the fact that Adaia had had her skull crushed by an errant billy club once they'd tired of breaking her arms and legs.

The second truth was that yes, her mother had been a warrior, and had taught Bell quite a lot before her death, and had even made the mistake once or twice of telling Bell how good she was at swordplay. Bell had taken that to heart, as she took so many things to heart, and then she never let go of it.

The third truth could hardly be called a truth at all. Shianni was rather under the impression that if it was _stupid_, it was hardly truth, but Bell didn't ever question it.

The third truth was that if you saw injustice being done, you had to put a stop to it.

**0.-0.-0**

They hit her cousin in the face.

They hit her cousin in the face, and if Shianni had had the presence of mind, she would have screamed many, terrible things about Bell's wedding dress hitting the dirt like that after it had been so much trouble to actually _get her into it_, but she was instead fighting the urge to scream for entirely different reasons.

Bell hit the ground in a crumpled heap and didn't move, and from the horrified look Nelaros was giving his intended bride, you would have thought he'd actually wanted to marry her. It was only his dash forward to throw himself over her that prevented the front guard from giving Bell a savage kick to her unprotected spine- they became so busy afterwards clubbing him around the head that they didn't have the chance. Shianni would have been touched for Bell's sake, under different circumstances.

Nola was screaming- something about the Maker, something nonsensical about Andraste's mercy, but one of the Bann's men had her arms pinned behind her back and had one hand clamped firmly on one breast as he hauled her away.

Belatedly, Shianni dove for the edge of the stage, hoping to get out, get _away_ before she was snatched up like the rest of them, when a blinding pain in her shoulders alerted her to the fact that the Bann had twisted her arms behind her and was jerking her back towards the safety of his group. The Chantry sister was still looking on, horrified, as the Bann breathed hard into her ear, "I've been looking _forward _to this, you knife-eared whore."

_I didn't hit him hard enough._

The thought was ridiculous and less than comforting, but somehow hysterically funny under the circumstances.

She knew she should be panicking, should be kicking herself for setting this whole, awful thing in motion, but all that she could think while looking at Bell's slack body being pulled through the dirt by one listless arm, was-

_She never even got to be the hero._

Shianni gave up and screamed for the hell of it, but the sound was lost in the noise and confusion.

**0.-0.-0**


	3. Chapter 3

**a life unkind**

**0.-0.-0**

**Summary: Shianni and her wayward cousin, but mostly Shianni, as Bell Tabris is hopeless and doomed to be just like her mother. – Multichapter Origin Fic.-**

**0.-0.-0**

Nola was worse than useless.

She hadn't stopped gibbering since they'd been herded into this cell, causing Shianni to send more than one savage look her way. She wasn't alone- the other girls were viewing her with equal parts alarm and distaste, as if giving the shems the satisfaction of their overwhelming fear was too embarrassing for words.

Satisfied, she thought, _good. It'll be easier that way._

She was sitting in the corner of the cell, apart from the others, with Bell's limp head and shoulders bundled into her lap. She stroked her hair absently from time to time, her expression unreadable.

This was how it was going to happen.

They were going to bring them, separately, or as a group to the Bann's quarters.

They were going to be raped.

It was entirely within the realm of possibility that several of them were going to end up murdered. There would be no investigation of their deaths, and whatever reprisals occurred would be swiftly crushed. Their one chance lay in cooperation.

Failing that, it would fall to one member of their group to occupy the Bann's time in such a way that he never found time to move on to the rest.

Against her will, her hands trembled, buried in Bell's hair.

This was not the first time the Bann had done this, after all. The girls he took usually came back, hollow eyed and jumpier than cats, but a few hadn't.

The key, she felt, lay in remaining calm.

At this point, Nola's gibbering reached a boiling point, and Shianni began to deeply reconsider this course of action.

Bell stirred.

A bolt of sheer, unbridled panic coursed through Shianni's fingers.

If Bell woke up, she would attempt a Plan. The Plan would be short, simple, and by all likelihood, almost sensible. Bell's Plan would be put into enthusiastic action at first opportunity, and would likely result in all of their bloody, violent deaths.

She had to think- had to think, had to do something to keep Bell _out of the way…_

The moment passed, and her cousin didn't wake up.

Shianni forced herself to be calm, and forced herself not to worry about the fact that her cousin had received a blow to the head that she hadn't woken up from yet. _Her mother, her mother, a stove-in skull and broken legs_, a small, terrified voice said, but she smashed that down with all the rest.

It was down to her. It all came down to her. That was all it ever came down to.

_I have to…, _she thought with grim clarity, _I have to keep him busy. As long as it takes. He remembers me, he said as much, I broke a wine bottle over his blighted head after all, so-_

She choked back an entirely inappropriate laugh. When it came down to the crunch, all she'd been able to do was to act exactly like Bell, complete with inopportune violence. It had all seemed so simple. Hurt him, make him go _away, _at least until the wedding was over and she could go home and have a drink first, but he'd rallied himself quicker than she'd thought, and now here they were.

And, oh Maker, what had she said- "_Touch me and I'll gut you." _She fought the urge to rub her forehead for that one. Bell was becoming a worse influence by the minute.

The thought was calm, almost reasonable. _He's going to touch you and he's going to hurt you, and he's going to make you remember him for the rest of your life, so that no other may touch you without his poisoning it first._

_You can't fight. You can only try to live through it._

Her shoulders relaxed.

**0.-0.-0**

When the guards come, Bell was still out cold, but when they began to haul the first group of girls away, she started to stir.

Bell came to her senses, blinking blearily and rubbing the back of her head, then visibly realized that she has been lying in the rapidly cooling puddle of Nola's blood- half her face and the whole front of her dress stained an ugly, browning red.

The last thing Shianni saw before one of the guards shoves her though the door was her cousin, shock bleeding across her features like a wine stain, reaching out for Shianni with outstretched fingers.

Shianni retained her composure. Nothing would come of panic. Nola had learned that the hard way, but the rest of the girls knew it too now.

It all came down to her.

**0.-0.-0**

_Author's note: Hey guys, know what's really hard to write about? Rape! Who knew??! D:_


	4. Chapter 4

**A life unkind**

**0.-0.-0**

**Summary: Shianni and her wayward cousin, but mostly Shianni, as Bell Tabris is hopeless and doomed to be just like her mother. – Multichapter Origin Fic.-**

**0.-0.-0**

The Bann had a reputation for ruining horses.

Shianni had a friend who knew an elf who worked in the stables. Apparently he'd seen the Bann's handiwork on more than one occasion. The mounts he went through came back windbroken, lame, or so badly scored by the Orlesian spurs the Bann preferred that they took infection and died.

Failing that, he drove them mad.

The stories all ended the same way. The Bann came into possession of a new horse. He then proceeded to cripple it or break its mind. If this failed to render the animal completely unable to accommodate another rider in its lifetime, he always found a way to discover some other, fatal flaw, and then he had it destroyed.

However, there had been times when the Bann found a horse that took him longer than usual to completely break. An Antivan warmblood, perhaps, or one of the massive Orlesian Perches. All would be going smoothly, the horses would give every indication of submissive terror and do absolutely everything he demanded of them, right up until the point when the beasts usually snapped and pounded three grooms into wet paste just trying to get at Bann Vaughan.

The Bann liked these horses, the stable elf had reportedly said. He still had them destroyed, but only after he had broken the animal so completely that there could be no going back. He would ride no other horse until he was satisfied.

At which point, he was known to have let the broken, mutilated beast loose in a paddock with its guts hanging out from its lacerated sides, and then let loose the Mabari.

.The process was known to take months. During this time, no other horses were ridden into the ground. It was a reprieve, of sorts. The Bann became so occupied in rubbing out every trace of defiance that he simply lost interest in any other pastime.

When a lull appeared, when the Bann and his friends seemed to be losing interest and started to send idle glances over to door that led to where the other women were being held, Shianni seized her opportunity.

She sucked in her breath, breathing hard through a too-tight nose that felt broken or worse. Then spat. Calculatingly.

The Bann's enthusiasm was suddenly revived.

He broke her other cheekbone.

**0.-0.-0**


	5. Chapter 5

**a life unkind**

**0.-0.-0**

**Summary: Shianni and her wayward cousin, but mostly Shianni, as Bell Tabris is hopeless and doomed to be just like her mother. – Multichapter Origin Fic.-**

**0.-0.-0**

Bell looked absolutely ridiculous.

It might have been her expression, her shocked eyes flicking from Shianni, curled up and silent on the flagstones, and back again to Bann Vaughan. It might have been the shoddy condition of her wedding dress, copper-brown in places from bloodstains.

It might have been the slender, one-handed longsword in her right hand, its tip dragging on the flagstones.

_Oh Maker, _she thought, frozenly. _They're going to kill her, they're going to have her, screaming, right here on this floor, and I could take it, I bore it, I didn't say a word, but she _can't-

Shianni shoved her pain and her cold-blooded terror as far down as she could and tried to remain calm, tried to _think. _

Bell had done the stupid thing. Again. She'd broken out- _somehow, _but she was willing to put some of the blame on Soris, who was standing terrified behind her_- _and now she'd gotten it into her head that this was an enemy that she could actually fight.

By this point, Shianni knew better.

The Bann was talking. She had to force herself to concentrate, the words slipping by her ears like she was stuffed full of wool batting and broken glass. His hand was stretched out to the side- a bargaining gesture, she realized, his voice gone all soft and reasonable like when… when…

Her burning face screwed up, she tried to heave herself into a sitting position, but was stopped when one of the Bann's men planted a foot on her bare chest and pressed down

Bell's eye's narrowed.

And suddenly, she changed.

Maybe it was just because she'd been surprised when she entered the room, but then she seemed to settle down into a stance that didn't seem ridiculous, or amateurish, or anything less than the swordswoman _she'd had to be to get this far._

_She spent every day out behind Alarith's, playing at swords while the rest of us were trying to get by, _Shianni thought. _And Cyrion sighed and rubbed his forehead and _I _lectured her on being _serious_ for a change, but neither of us noticed how very serious she was._

Bell's voice was the first to trickle down through the haze of pain and exhaustion surrounding Shianni. "And the other women?"

Shianni could _feel _the Bann smirk. "They'll be returned," he purred. "Somewhat… the worse for wear."

Images of Velora and of the other women going through what she'd been through branded themselves across Shianni's consciousness. She lurched, then, making an awful noise around a mouthful of broken teeth, trying to get free, to do something, _anything-_

Bell moved.

Or rather, she executed a flawless stop-thrust from a standing position, and the nearest guard, gurgling, went down clutching his spurting stomach with both hands.

"No deal," said Bell, flatly, her bloodied sword held casually before her.

The Bann roared something, and the room dissolved into a flurry of action and screaming steel. Soris hung to the back, grimly re-loading his crossbow after every shot, while Bell took on every other contender. She was fast, and she was brutal, and she knew what she was doing. She went for the knees, the eyes, any load-bearing joint she could reach, and Shianni realized that Bell wasn't the honorable death-seeker her mother had been because Bell _didn't fight honorably_. She was ruthlessly efficient, and it wasn't until every man in that room lay dead, Vaughan's head having thudded off and rolled under the bed only scant seconds after the first blow had been struck, that Bell turned worried, guileless eyes on Shianni.

By this point, Shianni had hauled herself away from the action until she was wedged with her back against one of the corners of the room, and when Bell stumbled over the corpses between them to reach her side, her fingers clenched white with the effort of keeping everything together.

Her cousin's hesitant touch on her knee brought her back.

Bell's eyes, unsurprisingly, were swimming with tears. "Shianni-" she blurted out, apparently gearing up for a speech. "I…. I didn't-"

Shianni knew that she should be thanking her cousin, should be breaking down and weeping and begging to be taken home because now it was finally safe to do so, and she _would, _she knew it, because there wasn't much else she could take for now, but-

She focused on Bell.

Focused on her beak of a nose and her messy golden hair and her earnest brown eyes. Focused on the calluses on her sword hand and the ugly bruise on her cheek from when she'd been struck down at the wedding. Focused on her big, ungainly, mule of a cousin who'd torn her way through the entire manor to reach her side.

Her voice cracking, she finally spoke.

"You ruined your dress."

**0.-0.-0**

_Author's Note: One more after this one, I think._


	6. Chapter 6

**a life unkind**

**0.-0.-0**

**Summary: Shianni and her wayward cousin, but mostly Shianni, as Bell Tabris is hopeless and doomed to be just like her mother. – Multichapter Origin Fic.-**

**0.-0.-0**

Of _course _the Grey Wardens got involved.

Leave it to her cousin to be taken in at the brink of disaster by a band of legendary warriors who'd _just so happened _to stop by an elven alienage looking for recruits. Of course.

It was like something out of a blighted bedtime story.

She fought back tears regardless. There was Bell, looking so tall, so _proud _with the Commander of the Grey. They'd rustled up clean clothes for her. Alarith had found some battered leathers for her- a shield even. She'd gone right back to looking gawky and ridiculous, but the set in her shoulders now was different. Less like a slender elf girl pretending at swords, and more like an uncertain young warrior faced with odds she didn't fully understand.

She looked more now like her mother than ever.

Bell hugged Shianni awkwardly with one arm, muttering under her breath, "Don't cry. Oh, Maker, Shianni, don't cry. I'm all right. Uncle Valendrian's gonna hide you in his basement for a few weeks. 'Larith snuck some dirty books down there a while back so you won't get bored-"

Shianni only refrained from grinding the heel of her palm in her eyes by virtue of the fact that it would probably pop a couple of stitches.

When she pulled back, Bell regarded her worriedly, all stricken brown eyes and bright, shining worry sharp enough to cut Shianni to the core.

She was about to break, she knew that. She withstood the act itself. She withstood the long, stumbling flight back to Cyrion's house, blood trickling down her chest and between her legs and sticking, tackily, to the flagstones beneath her feet. She withstood the other women's shocked, faintly repulsed stares, the murmured comforts as they inspected the worst of the damage. As they saw what had happened to her.

She wasn't sure if she could take this.

"Don't go." she blurted out, not caring how foolish it sounded. "It's too dangerous. The Grey Wardens-"

"I have a better chance surviving with the Wardens than I do in here," Bell said, a grim smile pulling at her lips. Her face sobered, and her voice grew gruff. "Shianni, you're going to be fine."

Shianni stiffened. Of course she was. She _was _fine. How _dare _Bell insinuate otherwise when she was about to go off and be a Grey Warden when everyone knew Grey Wardens always died at the ends of all those stupid stories and Bell was an _idiot _for thinking that this was going to solve anything.

She tried to say what she meant, tried to get the words out, when Bell, stupid, earnest, well-meaning Bell misinterpreted her silence entirely and said, cautiously, "Shianni, if you want me to, I won't go."

Just like that.

It jolted her to a halt. The pain faded away, the tiredness, the fear, all of it, confronted with this one terrible choice.

Of course she would say that.

She would, too. Just like Bell would marry Nelaros to keep her father happy, just like she'd try to keep his house and manage his finances and bear…. bear his children, she would. And she'd fail, because she was her mother's daughter down to the bone and there were no peaceful days for her, no happy domesticity, there was just the sword in her hands a bloodstained wedding dress to remind her that there were no happy endings. The Grey Wardens would keep her safe from the Arl's vengeance, it would give her purpose, honor, and battles to fight.

_Adaia would have wanted it. Would have joined, too, if not for Cyrion. If they would have her._

Shianni stepped back. Wiped her eyes briskly with the back of her hand. Ignored the pain that resulted. She could sense the rising tide of exhaustion that hovered around the corners of her eyesight, waiting to engulf her at a moment's notice. "No," she said firmly. "No, you need to go."

"I love you." she added, hastily. "I do. Stay safe."

Bell gave her a foolish, lopsided grin. Tears glinted at the corners of her eyes, but she kept smiling. "You know me." she murmured, brushing off her concern without making too much of it.

Shianni did. That was the problem.

And then her tall, ungainly cousin bumped an awkward kiss on her swollen, tear streaked cheek and went out the door to find her destiny, only this time it was Adaia, idly ruffling Shianni's hair with wine on her breath as she belted the sword to her hip and went out into the night one last time.

The other girls went to the window to watch her go. Shianni didn't.

**0.-0.-0**

She saw Bell once more.

In Denerim, as the alienage burned. Her cousin moved with purpose, with _grim intent_, a shining black sword in one hand and a shining shield in the other. She looked older, bigger, and as tired as Shianni had ever seen her.

There was no time to talk. The darkspawn were breaking through the hasty barricades erected by the still plague-stricken elves. Bell caught her eye once only, and flashed her a delighted grin, before a blackness fell across her face and she launched herself at a charging line of darkspawn.

Bell had a full company of knights under her command. Shems, _battalions _of them, obeying her cousin's orders. If she hadn't been too busy trying to organize the score of elves armed with longbows on top of the surrounding buildings, she would have gawked.

In the confusion and panic that followed, Shianni was unable to catch Bell before she'd already moved on to Fort Drakon.

In the morning, what everyone already knew about every single story with a Grey Warden in it was confirmed.

Bell remained her mother's daughter.

**0.-0.-0**

_Author's Notes: Okay, that's it. It's been a blast writing about my dumbass, doomed Tabris for this long, and I'm shocked and amazed that she's gotten such a good reception. Thank you so much for all of your reviews- I'm a tiny, tiny part of this fandom, but it's incredible that so many of you have enjoyed my stories. Thank you _so _much. I am completely floored._

_Hopefully I'll have something Brosca-related up here soon, so stay tuned!_


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